we as a fandom do not talk enough about the poor representations of african and indian culture in the franchise. speaking as a poc I don’t care if we can’t expect them to have total accurate representation; the least they could do is consult the indigenous people whom they’re supposed to represent. and no, it doesn’t matter that the characters aren’t human. although not the best, you can still see the cultural influences within the media. heck, even a non-fan could see them. I don’t know a lot about african culture myself, but I’m sure that if you ask someone from the regions where the lion king and guard take place, they’ll tell you of the inaccuracies; be it in pronunciations, be it in the animals themselves, be it in the spiritual concepts. how do I know this? because they got it wrong with the tree of life. first of all, as pointed out by others before, they could have chosen a different species than lions. second, their names. I usually think of it as something funny and lighthearted but come on. queen rani? queen queen??? and nirmala’s ‘aram karo’ just.. sigh. not only did they do a literal translation and therefore makes no sense, but they arent even pronouncing it right. if you were to talk to someone whose spoken hindi all their life, they’d say “calm down” would be “shant ho jao” or “shanti”. how do I know this? because I am that person. the pronunciations of their names are also so off and, for lack of a better description, WHITE, that it makes me feel icky. I don’t even WANT to know how bad they’re getting the swahili representation and pronunciations.
forget canon, even fandom does this sometimes. I’m not about to police people on how they get to portray the tlk/tlg characters in human form, but I think it should go without saying that we at least recognise and understand that these characters are from africa and india. say it. say it out loud. speak of it and speak of the racism within the franchise.
lastly I’d like to say I don’t mean to target anyone by saying this; this particular issue was just brought to my notice by a friend recently, though I have talked about this and representation in the franchise before. I am also not targetting the voice actors since at the end of the day all they’re doing is their job. thanks for reading if you did. /all informative tone.
